While we enquire about what exotic and potentially unfriendly alien metal money might be out in the galaxy , there are plenty of terrifying creatures right here at home .
Exhibit A : The tongue - eating louse , who makes a career out of devour a dupe ’s glossa before trying toreplaceit entirely . If Clive Barker orStephen Kingthought up a Pisces the Fishes sponge , this would be it .
This repulsion of nature was recently featured in aFacebookpost by theGalveston Island State Parkin Galveston , Texas , where it showed off a photo of the leech lodged inside a fish ’s mouthpiece .
( Image good manners of the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department )
The louse , orCymothoa exigua , is anisopod , or crustacean . It typicallyentersthe fish ( ordinarily the Atlantic croaker , sea trout , or snapper ) through its gills and look for to sever the blood vessel in the tongue , run through the blood until the tongue dies off .
It then settle in the fish ’s mouth , where it can survive on a unshakable diet of fish mucus and more rip . Some provender on the same fish , causingit to become malnourished . If a female insect is present , it can mate with males inside the mouth .
While it does n’t bolt down the fish , it would seem to make their cosmos annoying at best and hellish at bad .
According to the parking lot , it ’s the only sponge that can supercede a host ’s harmonium .
Fortunately , it does n’t point human being . Not physically , anyway . Psychologically , it ’s another tarradiddle . Or , as Coastal Fisheries Science Director Mark FishertoldKSAT in Texas : “ It can be a surprisal to peer into a Pisces ’s mouth and have another set of eyes appear back at you . ”
[ h / tNPR ]
